Introduction My little Indie game has grossed $2,000,000! I’m completely blown away! Thank you so much to all those players out there that bought the game!. Where did all that money come from? Read on, I’ll show you.Why? I recently did an ‘Ask Me Anything’ on Reddit (You can read it here) and the most asked question from budding Indie Devs was, ‘How much money have you made?’. I remember having difficulty finding sales data for Indie games when I started out, so I thought I’d share mine now.Some Background For those that aren’t familiar with Beat Hazard, it a music driven twin stick shooter. It takes tracks from your music collection and uses the power of that music to drive game play. It looks a something like this:

If you’re thinking, ‘Wow, I need that game now!’ you can pick it up here. I’m a 1 man indie developer. I was made redundant a few years ago after 15 years working for main stream studios. At that point I wanted to give indie development a go. So far it’s gone amazingly well!

Beat Hazard is coming up on its 3rd birthday and is now available on XBLIG, PC, Mac, PS3 & iOS. It has also just been released on Android (Details here) Given that the game has been out for so long and is now on quite a few platforms I thought I’d share some sales comparison data with you. I know how scarce this sort of information is so I hope you find it useful. So onto the good stuff...

Total Revenue

This is the total revenue for Beat Hazard over the years. There are spikes and bumps all over, so let’s break it down...

Separate Platforms

So here we have the revenue for each platform. We have Steam, XBLIG, PS3 and iOS. The first thing that jumps out is how Steam just kicks ass! Not only does the Steam version dwarf the income from other platforms, it keeps coming back to life like some lovable cash making zombie. Let’s look at how Valve helps developers make that happen:

The Mighty Power of Steam

Each spike on the Steam chart relates to a significant event: (a) I added an iTunes support a few months after the game came out. You can see that the extra exposure gave the game a good kick. (b) Beat Hazard was on sale during the Steam Xmas sale 2010. It was 50% off with one day at 70%. Also, Valve were giving away prizes for collecting special Xmas achievements. I added a survival achievement especially for the sale and that’s where a lot of the sales came from. Huge numbers of players bought the game at 70% off just to get the special achievement. (And a lot of those players went on to become true fans of the game) (c) To get the game approved for PSN I had to add extra features to the game (new modes, enemies, perks, weapons etc). I released these changes as the Ultra DLC on Steam. Just after this Valve had a summer sale where I added a Gold Ship to the game as a special sale prize. The Gold Ship was hugely popular and generated a lot of sales. (d) Another special Xmas sale involving collecting achievements to unlock prizes. This time I added an achievement where you had to survive 5 minutes while playing to Christmas music (Mwhahaha!) I think it drove some players up the wall with that one. (e) The last summer sale. This was just a normal discount sale without special prizes etc. What’s amazing it just how successful Steam sales are. They are just awesome. With a little extra work and a special version, Valve turns a normal sale into a buying and playing frenzy which everyone can enjoy. An important thing to note is that sales after a sale aren’t affected, if anything they go up due to the extra exposure. Ok, let’s have a look at the other platforms:

Platform Split

Here you can see the split over the life of the product between the different platforms. However, each version has been out different amounts of time, so here’s a normalised view:

Normalised Platform Split

With the normalised breakdown it’s interesting to see how lucrative XBLIG can be. It made nearly as much money as the full blown PSN version. And don’t forget, the XBLIG version was the base version, no extra ships or modes, no multiplayer, no leader boards or achievements. It shows you can get great sales on XBLIG.

Seeing Past the Steam

Here’s the separate platform graph again without Steam sales so you can see the differences between the other platforms more clearly. You can see that being featured on iOS gives you a massive boost, but sales quickly drop off compared to the other platforms.

Sony EU vs. Sony US

And for those that are interested, here’s the relative income from Sony US and Sony EU. Note: Sony US pay per quarter and Sony EU pay per month. For these graphs I’ve averaged out the quarterly payments into monthly ones. The US version has done marginally better than the EU one, but the difference isn’t huge.Conclusions Of course this is data from just one game, so I’d say don’t assume my data is general. It’s easy to see how successful you can be if you get on Steam. Steam sales are not just the only thing Value do well though; I feel that a big part of their success is how well they treat their developers. For those that don’t know, Steam has an excellent API which is very easy to work with, they don’t have a certification process and you can upload new version any time you want. They treat you with respect and you’re allowed to make your own mistakes (and are free to sort it out when you do). Console holders really need to take a leaf out of their book. They should lighten up and allow developers to more easily interact and respond to their community of players. Final Thoughts I hope you’ve found this breakdown useful. If you’re an Indie dev slaving over your love of labour, good luck with whatever project you’re working on. I hope you do well! Oh yeah, did I say Beat Hazard was out on Android? Grab it hereTwitter: @ColdBeamGames

Thanks for sharing that - I've long admired BH both as a brilliant game and because you supported it so well and brought it to almost everyone who asked!!

You discovered - as all good developers do - that getting involved with the community (Steam Forums in the case of the PC version) not only helps you refine the product but it also actively creates sales.

If you visit forums and people have a load of issues, it's offputting - but people don't make threads when they don't have issues so what you look for is someone addressing those issues - that, to me, often tips me into buying a game!!

I'm genuinely happy that BH has done so well - I look forward to your next pamphlet ;)

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Stephen Halloran

26/11/2012 10:28:59

I was wondering how the costs of Rating the games affected the profitability?

Very interesting breakdown, thank you very much for doing this. It's good to see what each platform offers.

I do think (and maybe this my own bias) that the PSN is getting the short end of the stick as it came out much later. All things being equal I, for instance, would have preferred to play this on the PS3. But I had already bought it on steam so when the ps3 version hit (even with new content) I didn't bother. There is a lot of crossover between the three platforms (leaving iOS out of it as that's its own beast). Most folks own both consoles and a pc. So the last one out of the gate is going to take a hit.

That said, I'd love to have this game on my vita, but im guessing after those ps3 numbers you aren't really thinking about it... ;)

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Steve

27/11/2012 04:16:48

PS3 being late might have had some effect, but then again it had multiplay, loads of new ships & game modes etc.
I'm not sure why it didn't do so well, but given the huge amount of extra effort & expense it took, I don't think I'll be going there again.

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AJ

28/11/2012 17:21:44

Awwww man...That PSN comment just crushed my dreams. :(

I bought Beat Hazard Ultra in 2011 on PSN immediately after trying the demo, and to be honest had never really heard about it before then. It quickly became one of my favourite games of all time. It's an amazing game, a transcending experience, and I've logged more time on it than most games I've ever played (second only to Demon's Souls for current gen games).

I certainly understand that I'm in the minority in terms of the numbers, many people prefer other consoles or PC and that's definitely okay. I'm sad to hear that PSN didn't meet expectations though. I don't own any other console, don't play games on my phone, and am not a big PC gamer. With that being said, if you don't plan on releasing a sequel/new version on PSN, then whatever platform you do go with will get my attention.

So beyond the success of Beat Hazard's sales, know that going forward, you'll be helping the sales of the platforms themselves. Best wishes in all future endeavours, I'm very much looking forward to whatever you do next.

Megan

27/11/2012 00:13:37

Thank you so much for sharing this. I am in the process of developing an iOS app and your graphs and comments have been very informative. In doing research on the iOS market these kinds of numbers and info are hard to come by. I appreciate your openness and I think devs could benefit one another from this type of sharing. Thanks again!

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Ali

27/11/2012 01:03:27

Was there any increase after the Giantbomb quicklook of Beat Hazard?

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NucleusDawn

27/11/2012 01:08:36

That was very interesting, and enlightening. Thank you :)

One more thing I'd like to know, is how much do you make on every sale?
For Steam sales, I heard about 70% from each sale, but there was nothing official.

1) you only show 5 months of iOS data, but the game was released 9 months ago. Does the graph go up to July?

2) I would think that an android port would not work due to audio lag? Doesn't a latency of a few hundred milliseconds ruin the experience of a music driven game?

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Steve

27/11/2012 04:18:26

1) Yup, the graph is up until July (Also you get paid a month behind)
2) There's no lag on the Android version. Do you get leg with Android?

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Kuba

27/11/2012 11:10:31

Do you think you could post a cumulative plot of the total revenue?

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XH

27/12/2012 01:00:36

Thanks for sharing. Really inspiring for fellow indie developers.

I see that you do allow people to buy directly from this site. How did direct sales fared as compared to Steam and the other platforms?

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Steve

28/12/2012 03:37:46

Direct sales for me are very low. I think most people come to my site after buying the game from Steam.

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Daystoga90

5/1/2013 18:36:58

just wanted to thanks for your hard work...I played this game on Xbox when it first came out...it blew me away...but never got to buy it tell now...always planned on getting it and I am glad I did...can't wait for a new game from u

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riverslq

20/7/2013 04:23:01

Hey, I love the game on my phone. I bought it as part of the humble bundle originally, as well as bought it on the google store to count twice. :)

I just got myself an OUYA, and would love to play it with dual joystick control. The game works so far if I plug a mouse in and use the mouse as a fake touch screen (single joystick mode only), but a real joystick config would be soooo much better.
Add that and I'd buy it a 3rd time! :)